I didn't say anything.
"See, I'm a trusting fellow, but I'm not stupid. Let's say I hand in my notes. First question I'm going to get is, 'What was the SOB doing in Prague if his orders called for him to be in Budapest?' And I'm going to say, 'Wow, good question. It didn't occur to me to ask. I was thinking of hills and girls on their sides.'" He clicked the lock on the briefcase. "Like I said, see you in a ditch."
"Go to hell. I'm only a police inspector. Sometimes they need someone unmarked. They hand me my passport, tell me to go somewhere, see someone, do something. Nothing complicated. I'm like background noise. No one looks twice at me." I glanced at the red eyebrows. "Anyway, as far as they're concerned, I don't know anything that will do anyone like you any good.
Even if you chop off my fingers one at a time, I've got nothing to tell."
"We're not into fingers." He settled back on the couch. "Not this week."
"You asked about Kang. Still interested?"
He gestured toward the table. "Sit down, if you want. You got something to say, I'm listening. I doubt if it's worth a lamb's tit. We'll have to see. If it makes any sense, I'll take out my notebook. Otherwise"-the red eyebrows jumped on his forehead, then settled back into place-"I have a date."
"The man's dead. Why would I make anything up?"
He clicked his pen twice. A nervous habit. He wasn't trained very well, I thought, and his Russian was getting worse the more we talked. I walked over to the table and sat down. "You ready?"
"Yeah." He turned on a tiny silver tape recorder and put it on the low table in front of him. The table was dark wood, maybe black walnut, covered by a white cloth with blue and red birds embroidered around the edge.
They all had sharp, bright yellow beaks. The cloth was new; you could still see where it had been folded, "first a nice narrative, a bedtime story. Clean and simple. I don't need anything too Oriental." All of a sudden, his Russian was perfect.
3
I didn't knock. Just opened the door, tossed the camera on Pak's desk, and pulled up the only empty chair left in the room. My trousers hadn't dried from the wet grass; the camera hadn't worked; nothing had been accomplished. I was plenty irritated, and I wanted Pak to know it. I could tell he was annoyed as well. He ignored me. He kept writing on his blackboard, making a clicking sound with the chalk as he lifted it and then attacked the blackboard again. He battered the blackboard pretty good, pretending to be deep in concentration before saying, "Please come in, Inspector." There were two other men in the room.
Neither one spoke. Finally, Pak turned to me. "Inspector O, you know everyone here." His face took on the slightest hint of warning. "Or maybe you don't. This is Captain Kim, from joint headquarters."
I had never run across Kim, but I didn't have to look twice to know we weren't meant to be friends. He had short hair, unevenly cropped, a thick neck, and a dark face with an expression that might have been sullen except that his eyes were quick and sharp, like little paring knives. His summer uniform was good quality, better than his haircut, and someone had spent a long time shining his boots. He gave me a dismissive glance, then turned to frown at the camera on Pak's desk. No one had to tell me, it was pretty clear he was connected with the surveillance.
"No pictures," I said. "Battery's dead. Anyway, there were no plates on the car." I flashed Kim a grin meant to suggest we were about to share something that would amuse him, but his little eyes stayed metallic, and I could sense he only laughed when he was the one making the joke. Off to the side, I could see Pak bracing himself. "You may not believe this, but the bastard honked the horn as he drove by."
The man next to Kim sat back and folded his arms. "What?"
Before I could reply, Pak took my elbow and walked me to the door.
"You'll be wanting some tea, Inspector."
"No, he needs to answer my question." I recognized the tone of voice. It was like the tip of a whip being dragged slowly back along the floor, just before it cracked through the air. A certain type of party official used that tone. Not mean, but quick and always decisive.
"Actually," I said, "I would like some tea." Pak shut his eyes. He did that when he was embarrassed. Whether he was willing himself into an incorporeal state or hoping I might disappear if he could no longer see me was never clear. The man in the chair shifted his weight and stretched his legs, seemingly unhurried and at ease, but watching me the whole time. He put his fingers together, tapered fingers with well-manicured nails. Not someone who had recently been out helping the farmers. I knew what was coming.
"I see, Inspector, that you are not wearing your portrait of either of our great Leaders." The man paused for a fraction of a second. Captain Kim's polished right boot tapped the floor lightly, just once, like the flick of a cat's tail. Everyone pretended not to notice. "Can I assume there is some reason you choose not to wear one, unlike your fellow citizens in the capital?"
"We don't wear pins in the field," I kept my tone matter-of-fact.
Pak's breathing had become dangerously slow. One of his standard warnings to me, repeated endlessly, was, "Never call the small picture of the Leader a pin." But every time I put the little round badge on, it pricked my finger. Same place, every time. As far as I was concerned it was a nuisance, a sharp point in my life I didn't need, a pin. I shrugged.
"I haven't been home in three days. It's in my top drawer, on the left.
Actually, the top drawer is my only drawer." I could not resist what came next. "But you probably already know that."
"Inspector, this is Deputy Director Kang from the Investigations Department." Pak was back with us. His eyelids flew open, and he put a smile on his face, though his lips didn't take part. "We rarely get a Central Committee visitor to our small office. This is an honor."
Kang smiled in return, not to be friendly but to show me his teeth.
He had on civilian clothes. His trousers were a little too long and wrinkled; the white shirt, open necked, looked like it was worn for a week at a time. His belt and his shoes were from overseas. Carefully chosen, not too stylish. The shoes were nicely scuffed, almost in deliberate counterpoint to Kim's boots. "I asked a question," he said evenly. "I'm still waiting for an answer."
"What I said was, the bastard honked."
Captain Kim broke in. "Who did? You mean the driver?"
This caught my attention. I had assumed the two of them were cooperating, until Kim interrupted. Even in a session as informal as this, interrupting threw off the rhythm. Questions weren't the key to an interrogation; it was the rhythm. Lose that, you lose everything. Then you have to start all over again. Good teams wouldn't do that. Even bad teams observed basic rules.
"How do I know who honked?" I relaxed. These two, whatever they were doing in Pak's office, were pulling against each other. "The windows were smoked, and the car was moving so fast it was a blur."
"So how could you be sure it had no plates?" Kim picked up the camera. Unlike Kang's, his hands were calloused and hard. Not from helping farmers but from breaking bricks and boards. Maybe bones, though I wasn't going to ask. Kim's voice emerged from inside a dark cave, where even simple questions were mauled and came out nasty.
"How do we know you didn't fail to take the picture on purpose? How do we even know you really tried?"
"Look." My voice got an edge to it sometimes when it shouldn't, and this was one of those times. I put both hands on Pak's desk and leaned toward the two strangers, moving slowly, deliberately. It was either insubordinate or rude, I didn't care which. Kim's face darkened even more. He wanted a sign of deference, maybe a touch of fear, something to show I acknowledged his status, but I wasn't in the mood to be deferential.